A radial network diagram of Les Miserables characters with hierarchical edge bundling. Nodes are ordered and grouped by the first chapter the character appeared in.
Radial layouts can be useful for seeing patterns between and within groups. For example, we can see that all the characters in Vol 1, Book 3, Chapter 4 only interact with each other, Fantine, and Felix Tholomyes. However, this layout has difficulty scaling to hundreds of nodes, and edge bundling can make it difficult to count the number of links connecting to each node.
A related visualization is the chord diagram, which shows aggregated connections between groups.
xxxxxxxxxx<meta charset="utf-8"><style>svg { font: 10px sans-serif;}path { fill: none; stroke: #999; stroke-opacity: 0.6; stroke-width: 1.5px;}.node circle { fill: #d62333; stroke: #fff; stroke-width: 1px;}</style><svg></svg><script src="https://d3js.org/d3.v4.min.js"></script><script>var diameter = 600;var radius = diameter / 2;var innerRadius = radius - 70;var cluster = d3.cluster() .size([360, innerRadius]) .separation(function(a, b) { return (a.parent == b.parent ? 1 : a.parent.parent == b.parent.parent ? 2 : 4); });var line = d3.line() .x(xAccessor) .y(yAccessor) .curve(d3.curveBundle.beta(0.7));var svg = d3.select('svg') .attr('width', diameter) .attr('height', diameter) .append('g') .attr('transform', 'translate(' + radius + ',' + radius + ')');d3.json('jean.json', function (error, graph) { if (error) throw error; var idToNode = {}; graph.nodes.forEach(function (n) { idToNode[n.id] = n; }); graph.links.forEach(function (e) { e.source = idToNode[e.source]; e.target = idToNode[e.target]; }); // Find first appearance (volume, book, chapter) graph.nodes.forEach(function (n) { n.chapters = n.chapters.map(function (chaps) { return chaps.split('.').map(function (c) { return parseInt(c); }); }); n.chapters.sort(chapterCompare).reverse(); n.firstChapter = n.chapters[0].map(function (d) { return d.toString().length == 1 ? '0' + d.toString() : d.toString(); }).join('.'); }); var tree = cluster(d3.hierarchy(chapterHierarchy(graph.nodes)).sort(function(a, b) { if (a.data.hasOwnProperty('firstChapter') && b.data.hasOwnProperty('firstChapter')) return a.data.firstChapter.localeCompare(b.data.firstChapter); return a.data.name.localeCompare(b.data.name); })); var leaves = tree.leaves(); var paths = graph.links.map(function (l) { var source = leaves.filter(function (d) { return d.data === l.source; })[0]; var target = leaves.filter(function (d) { return d.data === l.target; })[0]; return source.path(target); }); var link = svg.selectAll('.link') .data(paths) .enter().append('path') .attr('class', 'link') .attr('d', function (d) { return line(d) }) .on('mouseover', function (l) { link .style('stroke', null) .style('stroke-opacity', null); d3.select(this) .style('stroke', '#d62333') .style('stroke-opacity', 1); node.selectAll('circle') .style('fill', null); node.filter(function (n) { return n === l[0] || n === l[l.length - 1]; }) .selectAll('circle') .style('fill', 'black'); }) .on('mouseout', function (d) { link .style('stroke', null) .style('stroke-opacity', null); node.selectAll('circle') .style('fill', null); }); var node = svg.selectAll('.node') .data(tree.leaves()) .enter().append('g') .attr('class', 'node') .attr('transform', function (d) { return 'translate(' + xAccessor(d) + ',' + yAccessor(d) + ')'; }) .on('mouseover', function (d) { node.style('fill', null); d3.select(this).selectAll('circle').style('fill', 'black'); var nodesToHighlight = paths.map(function (e) { return e[0] === d ? e[e.length-1] : e[e.length-1] === d ? e[0] : 0}) .filter(function (d) { return d; }); node.filter(function (d) { return nodesToHighlight.indexOf(d) >= 0; }) .selectAll('circle') .style('fill', '#555'); link .style('stroke-opacity', function (link_d) { return link_d[0] === d | link_d[link_d.length - 1] === d ? 1 : null; }) .style('stroke', function (link_d) { return link_d[0] === d | link_d[link_d.length - 1] === d ? '#d62333' : null; }); }) .on('mouseout', function (d) { link .style('stroke-opacity', null) .style('stroke', null); node.selectAll('circle') .style('fill', null); }); node.append('circle').attr('r', 4) .append('title') .text(function (d) { return d.data.name; }); node.append('text') .attr('dy', '0.32em') .attr('x', function (d) { return d.x < 180 ? 6 : -6; }) .style('text-anchor', function (d) { return d.x < 180 ? 'start' : 'end'; }) .attr('transform', function (d) { return 'rotate(' + (d.x < 180 ? d.x - 90 : d.x + 90) + ')'; }) .text(function (d) { return d.data.firstChapter + ' - ' + d.data.id; }); function chapterCompare (aChaps, bChaps) { if (aChaps[0] != bChaps[0]) return bChaps[0] - aChaps[0]; else if (aChaps[1] != bChaps[0]) return bChaps[1] - aChaps[1]; else if (aChaps[2] != bChaps[2]) return bChaps[2] - aChaps[2]; return 0; }});function chapterHierarchy (characters) { var hierarchy = { root: {name: 'root', children: []} }; characters.forEach(function (c) { var chapter = c.firstChapter; var book = c.firstChapter.substring(0, c.firstChapter.lastIndexOf('.')); var volume = book.substring(0, book.lastIndexOf('.')); if (!hierarchy[volume]) { hierarchy[volume] = {name: volume, children: [], parent: hierarchy['root']}; hierarchy['root'].children.push(hierarchy[volume]); } if (!hierarchy[book]) { hierarchy[book] = {name: book, children: [], parent: hierarchy[volume]}; hierarchy[volume].children.push(hierarchy[book]); } if (!hierarchy[chapter]) { hierarchy[chapter] = {name: chapter, children: [], parent: hierarchy[book]}; hierarchy[book].children.push(hierarchy[chapter]); } c.parent = hierarchy[chapter]; hierarchy[chapter].children.push(c); }); return hierarchy['root'];}function xAccessor (d) { var angle = (d.x - 90) / 180 * Math.PI, radius = d.y; return radius * Math.cos(angle);}function yAccessor (d) { var angle = (d.x - 90) / 180 * Math.PI, radius = d.y; return radius * Math.sin(angle);}</script> https://d3js.org/d3.v4.min.js